Archive for September, 2007

10 Keys to the Successful Online Business

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Whether you engage in monetized blogging or if you actually sell your own products, these are the 10 key parts that I believe you MUST have in order to be on the road to success.

1. You! There must be someone with the entrepreneurial spirit at the head of any business project, whether it be large scale, small scale, personal, or anything. Without you and the will to succeed, your business will fall.

2. The Money Opportunity With the start of the internet, there have been so many openings and different mediums to make streams of income, finding the right one for you can be tough, but once you’ve found it, there will be no need for a motivator since the motivation is within the medium!

3. Your Offer So you’ve discovered the money opportunity that suits you, but what will you offer within this opportunity? What is new that you will bring to this area and what is going to make people want YOUR offer more than the existing ones out there?

4. Advertising How are you going to spread the word of your new amazing product? Are you willing to spend out-of-pocket money to advertise your new product? There are many FREE advertising opportunities out there for you, and there are also many cheap and effective advertising opportunities along with these, such as Google’s AdWords. This is one of the toughest steps to starting your business because with the ever present easy accessibility to the internet, there are SO many different ways to reach your target audience, and a lot of trouble making sure that your audience doesn’t have to sift through garbage to get to your gem.

5. Allowing Growth You have your business set up and you were running it fine by yourself and everything was going great, but what if the business gets too cumbersome and you are starting to lag behind and you need to expand? Make sure you have a plan ready to expand your business and keep your income flowing! Along with this make sure you document everything your business has done so you can have something to show any possible employees to make them know you’re legitimate!

6. Resultifying Yes I know it’s not a word, but you have to put everything into categories based on the results they’ve given you, this will help you eliminate things from your marketing strategy that aren’t working out and help you incorporate or better yet expand on parts of your marketing strategy that DID work.

7. Recruiting Plans If you plan on recruiting other employees to your market strategy (yes this can even apply to Bloggers if you want to have multiple people writing to your Blog!) you will have to first find out how you will reach out to others seeking a job in the area that your business provides. Afterwards, you will want to have a plan on how YOU will make an income from your new recruits while still paying them as well. This is a VERY hard step, but an important one that CANNOT be overlooked, with the exception if you DO NOT plan on having multiple employees aside from yourself.

8. Product Development Let’s say you’ve marketed your product and you’ve started selling. What improvements can you make to your product? How can you make people want it even more? Find ways to improve and/or expand on your product, this step is key for keeping your business alive and flourishing.

9. Customer Service You have your customer base, now you need to prove to others that you are good to your customers and do what you do, just for them. Get testimonials from your customers, be active with your customers and be sure to respond to all of their questions and comments as soon as possible. This can help keep old customers AND gain new ones.

10. Enjoy your work! Now you have your business set up and you’re gaining income, now it’s time to enjoy it! Go get something nice for yourself, or go somewhere nice that you’ve always wanted to go! You earned it so you can do what you want with it!

Compare Microsoft Office to Free Alternatives

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

In the early days of the personal computing popularity wave, the only software available was what came on the Microsoft disk or what was available at retail, usually published by Microsoft or Microsoft sponsored partners. This limitation meant that Microsoft generally had the market monopolized and Windows and Windows related products ruled the day as store shelves were filled with ubiquitous blue boxes. As time marched on and networking improved, broadband and other high-speed alternatives entered the picture.

It suddenly became possible to download large files over the Internet for free that had been designed and built by users across the Internet in an open source model. Suddenly the wealth of software that you could compare Microsoft Office and other Microsoft-based software with was plentiful and easy to find. Taking the place of the expensive and sometimes difficult to operate Microsoft software was a wealth of free alternatives, some more and some less effective than the original.

You can compare Microsoft office with Sun Office, Open Office and other office type related software programs. Microsoft office comparisons are inevitable, as so many software companies have made software that do the job of other types of software that had preceded them and could be compared to Microsoft office. This is a common factor in any type of business as the most successful method of conducting business is to emulate someone who has been successful previously.

The difference being that many of the offerings on the Internet that follow the open source model are free, as everyone in the community has contributed to their development and distribution over the web. This community has enabled the World Wide Web to become a launching pad for many different concepts and ideas in the free and open exchange of learning and sharing of knowledge. The attempt to compare Microsoft Office with some of the free software that is available on the web is somewhat unfair, as price will always enter into the picture.

In the event that the user feels that after they compare Microsoft office with some of the free alternatives they still prefer the Windows-based alternative, that there are still options that are available to customize the word processing and Microsoft Office comparable tasks that take place in any office software.

Some of the functions of Microsoft Office are very simple and easy to replicate but many would argue that the ubiquity and widespread presence of the Microsoft software is a hard to beat factor in the world of software competition. Since every piece of software available is compatible with Microsoft Windows and Windows-based environments, it leads to the production of more and more Microsoft products in the monopolization of the market to a greater degree overall. Despite this fact, free alternatives have proliferated on the Internet and many users choose to use the free alternatives, as there are many to choose from that you can compare Microsoft office and other office environment related software to that treat documents as well as other file types in a similar fashion to the program that the user would compare Microsoft office with.